Juan Cabrillo didn't just "discover" California. He arrived, like so many others after him on someone else's land, under someone else's flag, with his own tangled backstory.

Most people learn about Cabrillo as the Spanish explorer who landed in what's now San Diego in 1542. But many scholars believe he was actually Portuguese, possibly born João Rodrigues Cabrilho. That small detail is often brushed aside. But it matters.

Because from the very start, California has been influenced by people who crossed borders, sometimes by choice, often by force, and always with complicated circumstances.

Cabrillo's arrival kicked off centuries of colonization and disruption for Indigenous communities. That history shouldn't be romanticized. But it also shouldn't be oversimplified.

The early story of California was about migration, layered identities, and people who didn't quite fit the neat categories history likes to use.

The statue overlooking the Pacific captures none of this.

Today, we're still arguing about who gets to be here. Who belongs.

Who's "legal."

And somehow, we forget that the state itself began with a man who was an immigrant, working for an empire, landing on unfamiliar shores.

There are over 10 million immigrants in California today. Some have been here for decades. Others are waiting in detention centers, or trying to build a life while public debates reduce them to numbers or threats.

But the fact is, they're not breaking a pattern but continuing one. The arguments about who belongs here have been going on since 1542. What's changed is that now we pretend there was ever a time when the answer was simple.